


The Night Before the Bloodshed

by The_Story_Queen



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Bad Dreams, Dark images, F/M, Gaea - Freeform, Sleepless night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 03:30:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1330270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Story_Queen/pseuds/The_Story_Queen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just a few hours before show time, or the Feast of Spes, which ever works, but Annabeth still can't force herself to sleep. The images just keep rolling in her head, just bloodshed from all her failed solutions to getting them all out alive.  <br/>Annabeth knows one of them is going to die, at the least.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Night Before the Bloodshed

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse, really, so yeah!

            Annabeth can’t calm herself down enough to sleep.

            She paces around her personal room on the Argo II. She frets her hands together as she does and runs them through her hair in a flurry of tense, short motions, trying to vent out her frustration but to no avail.

            Her mind is racing, as it always does, but her thoughts hold a darker edge, that extra _thing_ that just makes them dig a _little_ deeper than her inventive ideas. As the thoughts and images get darker, it gets harder to escape the loop her mind is creating.

            _Find a plan. Bloodshed. Cry. Find a plan. Bloodshed._

            Probability wise, she knows someone is going to die, but she still hopes that all seven of them make it out alive, as stupid and naive as the idea is.

            So, here she sits, on the day before the Feast of Spes, her mind trying to wrap around a way to get them all to survive and coming up with the taste of blood and failure each time.

            Annabeth swears she can taste the blood the images have created in her mind but she refuses to give up, even as the images being to supply her with no survivors but herself each time, only blood shed and militated bodies and cold eyes and Gaea’s laugh echoing in her ears as she fights to the last of her strength.

            Limply, she falls to her mattress, finally too tired and worn to stand. The images still roll, however, wearing her down until she is nearly broken.

            It’s another hour before she can get the energy to stand up and yet another ten minutes before she gets the courage to leave the room. She heads to Percy’s room, listening as she walks for any sign of life.

            She hears nothing, and almost sighs in relief.

            The door to Percy’s room is unlocked, thankfully. Percy is asleep on the bed, his last few nights of being purely nocturnal finally catching up to him in one fitful sleep. Annabeth’s glad, she honestly is, but she can’t help but notice the small hole in her chest that forms when she sees him, sprawled messily on his bed, twitching as he sleeps.

            Annabeth walks silently to the bed, doing her best to keep the floor from creaking- not that she really has to with Percy.

            Annabeth curls into his side, lying there silently as she breathes in his scent. It’s a mixture of salt and sun, a combination that is hard to explain, but weirdly perfect. Percy doesn’t move, only continues to lightly snore, but his presence does a number to help Annabeth finally calm down, even if only for a little while.

            Annabeth knows the images will come back, most likely tomorrow on the battle field and they won’t be images her mind comes up with any longer. They will be more vivid and real and bloody and…

            _Stop it!_

            Tonight, she realizes, could very well be her last night with Percy- the first person she has ever said ‘I love you,’ too, and she doesn’t know how to cope.

            For now, sleep is the only thing she can think of. So that’s what she does, hoping that the dreams don’t come.

           They do, this time early in the next morning as she and Percy lock eyes for the final time. 


End file.
